Wood considered a role model for his Pleasant View team

Feb. 22, 2014

Craig Michael Wood in a Pleasant View football team photo. Submitted photo

Written by

The day seventh-grader Caleb Funk found out his football coach had been arrested in the abduction of a little girl, he came home and went straight to his room.

He didn’t want to play a video game, turn on the TV or talk. He shut the door to his room, lay down and stared at the ceiling.

“I just can’t get my head around it,” said Caleb, 13. “I can’t believe it was him, I can’t.”

Caleb isn’t alone.

Former players and their parents are struggling to reconcile that the man they respected as a strict, hardworking and talented seventh-grade football coach — leading at least one former team to a city championship — is now accused of the kidnapping and killing of a 10-year-old girl.

“Some of them have been crying and going to see a counselor,” Caleb said of his fellow players. “He was a good coach. You just wouldn’t imagine him doing that. It’s been really weird.”

Craig Michael Wood, 45, has coached seventh-grade football at Pleasant View Elementary and Middle School since he was hired by the district in 1998. Last year, he also become the assistant boys basketball coach.

The 1986 Marshfield High graduate was employed as a teaching assistant at the 650-student school at 2210 E. State Highway AA, where he was primarily assigned to in-school suspension. He also supervised lunch detention, helped monitor hallways and was a constant presence at Pleasant View and Hillcrest High School athletic events.

“My son played football under him and they won a citywide championship. He pushed the kids to be everything they could be. He was a role model,” said Travis Baker, whose son is now a junior at Hillcrest. “It’s very tough. This whole thing has knocked the wind out of us.”

Baker, who has five children and lives in north Springfield, said he’s struggling to believe it’s even possible that Wood is capable of doing what was described in the charges.

“I’ve talked to him 100 times ... I can’t say anything negative about him,” he said. “What has happened is obviously very, very bad but nothing up to this point made me even consider it.”

Baker said the son coached by Wood considers the time spent playing football one of the highlights of middle school.

“He says it hurts his heart to even think something like this happened,” he said. “... It just blew everybody away.”

Caleb’s parents, Ken and Teresa Funk, have known Wood for years and were dumbfounded Wednesday morning when the name of the suspect in the abduction, and his photo, appeared in the news.

“I’m in as much shock as Caleb is. They always say it’s a stranger but here it isn’t a stranger,” said Teresa Funk. “This man has been around these kids all this time. The boys looked up to him. They’re waiting for some sort of response or statement from him. I tried to tell Caleb you may not hear anything.”

The Funks’ sadness was compounded by the fact that they remember the abducted and slain girl, Hailey Owens, because her family and theirs used to live near Bowerman Elementary. She was a friendly face on the school playground, where kids congregated on nights and weekends, and the boys would come over and jump on the Funks’ trampoline.

“I really feel bad and sorry for what happened,” Ken Funk said.

The Funks have thought and rethought and can’t point to any interaction with Wood that gave them pause. They don’t remember seeing or hearing anything that helps them understand how he could be charged with a heinous crime.

“I left my kids with him, in his care, after school and never questioned it,” Ken Funk said. “He’s not that quiet, strange type of guy, someone you’d worry about.”

Parents interviewed by the News-Leader said it wasn’t uncommon to see Wood walking down the hall, smiling and even singing a little to himself. He was always up for talking sports, whether you had a kid on his team or not.

When Caleb finally hit seventh grade, he was excited to try out for Wood’s team. He said the students who had played for Wood the previous year said he was a good, but tough, coach.

Teresa Funk said she and some of the moms considered Wood “kind of goofy” because he’d always wear “old ’80s track suits with his hairy chest bulging out.” But other than his choice of clothing, nothing made him stand out.

“I never thought he was weird. I never felt uneasy around him,” she said. “Everybody is in total shock.”

The Funks said they and other parents were on high alert for anything out of the ordinary because less than three years ago, a Pleasant View fourth-grade teacher was caught sending sexual messages to a student. That teacher, Jeffrey Turnbough, pleaded guilty last year to attempted sexual misconduct involving a child.

Teresa Funk said she viewed Wood as a caring adult in her son’s life. When Caleb injured his foot last year, Wood would call and urge her to take him to get it checked by a doctor. He also made sure the foot was wrapped properly before games.

“He was always there and was always involved,” she said. “All the boys looked up to him.”

Caleb said Wood was strict, like a drill sergeant, but went out of his way to keep practices and team meetings lighthearted. “He was always trying to make jokes to make us laugh,” she said.

But he recalls one time when Wood got very serious. One of the players made a crack about drugs and Wood called the team together for a talk.

“He told some of the football team that he used to do drugs,” said Caleb, unaware that Wood pleaded guilty in 1990 to possession of marijuana. “He was telling the kids not to do it. He said you should never do drugs.”